


To Tomorrow

by RurouniHime



Series: Day series [4]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anniversary, Dinner, Fluff, Late at Night, Love, M/M, Married Couple, Music, One Year Later, Plans, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>God, he is incapable of doing this right. Can’t be a proper husband.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beili](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beili/gifts).



> So this series is setting itself up as anniversary-focused. I'm kind of excited!
> 
> This fic is for beili, for her beautiful watercolor artwork of Arthur (linked in Part One: Nice Day For It). ♥ Her prompt was "time zones". This one deviated a little bit, but I hope it hits the spot!

Arthur forgets the switch to British Summer Time. One fucking hour.

It had to happen sometime; he juggles this kind of thing so often that one instance is bound to slip through the cracks, or, more appropriately, his rather capable fingers. Logically, he knows this. But logic is a damned asshole today, a cackling, smug, shrugging prick that Arthur doesn’t know at all, thank you very much.

The time change is such a small thing in the overall scheme, but for a tactician whose life runs completely by the tick tick tick of a clock, a ‘small thing’ is more than enough to set back an entire scheme, including but not limited to business hours and departure times and even the most effective time of day to use certain blends of Somnacin. 

Luckily no one comes even close to getting killed this time. Small favors. No, the devastation is of an entirely different sort.

Arthur had plans to be home at his apartment fourteen hours ago, forgetting all about this stupid job, and napping, and cooking, and generally preparing to reacquaint himself with a certain tattooed, gorgeous individual whom he hasn’t seen in three weeks.

That ship sailed sometime back around four o’clock in the morning (British Fucking Summer Time), when the finale of this amazingly obtuse orchestral suite picked up speed for its climactic crescendo. And Arthur’s been manically recalculating from that instant, and again as he leaped off the last stair onto the tarmac, leaving that stupid little plane behind at last, judging the seconds he can shave off between each stride, configuring taxi routes in his head, deciding if it’s worth the time necessary to change into running shoes while waiting for said taxis, determining which position beside the baggage carousel will put him in most economical reach of his things in relation to the airport’s several exits, mapping out the trajectories of individual people walking down the street/across the terminal/in through the blasted doors of their current apartment building so that he can avoid running into them, holy _shit_ , but that’s just what his brain does, all on its own, thank god.

But one by one those concerns have dropped away. As the job was delayed two days. As their architect had to rewrite an entire level midway through preparations. As the airline home double booked his reservation. As turbulence added another eight hours to his time awake. As the trans-Atlantic pilot announced they’d be rerouting due to inclement weather in New York. As his new connecting flight took off with Arthur still dashing down the moving walkway ten gates away. As his dumber-than-advertised burner phone conked out for good somewhere over the Great Lakes. As his baggage decided to stay at the layover airport instead of coming home with him. As the taxi queue managed to run out of fucking taxis. 

As the sliding door stopped functioning, as the elevator wouldn’t work, as the door to his floor from the stairwell wouldn’t open, except when Arthur finally hauled back and kicked it in. Took ten precious seconds. And that’s to say nothing of what the oven or the vintage record player he hunted down as a gift or the fucking electrical breakers might be doing at this moment inside their apartment. That’s all past. At this point, it’s twenty seconds to midnight, the last twenty seconds of the anniversary of the day he took Eames’ hand in his and pledged body and soul (and heart and breath and fucking _life_ ) to him forever, and Arthur’s only goal now is to get his husband _in his sights_ by the time the clock ticks over to tomorrow. 

He gets his keys out without dropping them, which he counts as an extremely fortuitous event considering his week, takes the long hallway at a sprint, and skids to a stop right in front of his door, shoulder bag smacking hard into his hip, low on air, on sleep, on sanity, on _Eames_ , god, he just needs to— and jamming his key into the lock in one try.

And watching it snap as he jiggles it to the right.

“No.” It sounds far too calm. He can’t be sure he’s the one who said it.

Outside the building, the nearest church’s bells are already ringing, twelve ominous chimes. On his wrist, visible just under the sleeve where his hand still grips the doorknob, his watch ticks over past midnight.

Arthur stares at it. The entire hallway is silent now, the church bell a muffled bonging in the distance. 

“No,” he breathes this time. The word slumps out of him, along with the dirtiest dregs of energy, that last spastic flare that kept him moving right up until this moment. Arthur doesn’t feel himself leaning until his shoulder hits the wall and he slides down it, sprawling in the hallway, emptier than he has ever felt.

Planners. Calendars. A fucking topnotch SmartPhone demo that isn’t even on sale to the public yet. He has them all. He’s the best at what he does. People he loves pass their lives over willingly into his hands and he never, ever drops them. But. This.

God, he is incapable of doing this right. Can’t be a proper husband, and when did that even make a difference in the way things played out, anyway? Before they were married, Arthur was always on top of this kind of thing. Not that Eames ever showed a huge and defining attachment to celebrating anniversaries, but the point is, Arthur was _ready_ for it. If he did. 

Flight schedules and tickets he can blackmail out of people at the drop of a hat and hotel rooms on retainer and even a fucking cruise ship on one memorable occasion, which Eames _had_ taken him up on, but it wasn’t for any anniversary, and Arthur’s fine with that, actually; he’s not such a huge anniversary man himself. He’d just as soon find the celebration in any dull day with Eames, because he’s Eames, and Arthur never needed an annual date to strengthen that for him once he knew he was in love. God, they have such a weird relationship.

But this time… he’d wanted to celebrate it. _Ached_ for it in some ill-defined way he’d never experienced before, deep in his gut and behind his ribs and inside his bones. That’s the only way he can describe the sensation. He’d felt alive with it for months, alert on its currents and sharper in mind than he’d ever been, and he just _wanted_. 

A year. The gateway for all the years he can see stretching out before them.

Arthur shudders and puts his face in his hands. Draws his knees up and pushes his back against the wall and just… sits, in the buzzing yellow light of their apartment hallway.

He knows he’s being ridiculous. He’s tired, he’s overwhelmed and overcommitted, and has been for days. He’s disappointed and angry and just plain sore. But he can’t help the thing that’s welling up, the sense of failure. Of having missed completely, by such a miniscule margin, when it really, really mattered.

The door clicks open. Arthur lets his hands drop from his eyes. 

Eames looks drained. A little paler and a little drawn around the face, and a little like he forgot he once cared about how clothing looks on him. He’s smiling.

He comes out into the hallway and crouches down, so close his knee is in between Arthur’s. Reaches out and touches Arthur’s cheek. “Hello, love.”

“Hi,” Arthur croaks.

Eames takes in the snapped key on the floor at Arthur’s side, the lone bag at Arthur’s hip, the other half of the key jammed into the knob, and doesn’t say anything. He’s wearing loose sweatpants and gray socks and a white tank worn enough that Arthur can see the vague outline of every tattoo on the front of his body. He knows if he leans in, presses his nose to the thin fabric, he’ll smell what Eames smells like when he’s asleep.

“Are you hurt?” Eames asks quietly.

Arthur shakes his head, rolling it back and forth along the wall. It feels kind of good and he’s tempted to keep doing it. He thinks then about dangerous forging, people he wouldn’t want to meet alone in a back alley, much less go under into a dream with, the blasted expensive phone he could barely even use to call home, and feels his mind sharpen again. “You?”

“Nope.” Eames’ fingers are familiarly callused, his eyes tired but warm, skating slowly up and down Arthur’s face like he’s looking at a work of art, memorizing, recalling detail.

“God, I’m sorry,” Arthur says, unwilling, feeling it bleed from him in a gush that just wants forgiveness for not being the best at this, too.

Eames’ eyebrows lift. “For what?”

He can’t stop _looking_ at his husband’s face. Like a freshwater pearl sunset where the clouds keep changing, where the colors melt and each second is absolutely crucial to the understanding of such a sacred event. Arthur is shaking, he can feel it in each muscle, the release of a tension kept at bay by sheer force of will. He doesn’t think he can do this anymore, can’t come back to their home and see Eames looking… like he does and not react. Not lose a little control.

He swallows and sees Eames follow it with his eyes. “I’m late.”

“Hm,” Eames murmurs, and rises, finds Arthur’s hands and pulls him easily to his feet. No jerks, no struggles midway up, just Eames’ arm around his back to steady him when he’s finally upright.

“Time zones,” Arthur says dully, getting through the front door and down the little hallway without much trouble. He feels like he’s floating, everything going fuzzy around the edges of his nerves. Numb, maybe. Arthur, done in by daylight savings. He’ll lose his reputation over this if it ever gets out. “I mean… time change. I—”

He stops as the kitchen comes into view.

The thing about this anniversary is that Arthur didn’t plan any extravagant trips. No luxury hotels, even though he misses everything that went on in that penthouse suite from last year with a sweet, sweet agony he doesn’t think he’ll ever get over. No month-long trips, even though he knows for a fact that Eames would go back to St. Lucia in half an instant just to see Arthur on that lounge chair in the middle of that private beach, wearing nothing but sunglasses and a smile. He does have truffles and Muscat, because some things are sacred, and he ordered them ages ago, to arrive this very day.

And there they sit, on the little kitchen table. The bottle is unopened, resting in a clay chiller still dark with condensation. The truffles sit beautifully on a plate in the center, and Arthur remembers all at once that he hasn’t eaten in hours. 

He can smell something fantastic and warm and spicy.

“Dinner’s in the cooker,” Eames tells him. His body is hot and solid against Arthur’s side, and Arthur can feel his gaze, the way his head is tilted, looking at him.

Eames found the food. Cooked it. And… He can’t believe he’s being so slow about all of this, where the hell has his brain gone? There’s music, sultry piano and drums complete with the crackle and rasp of vinyl coming from the living room. Arthur pushes back, sways and nearly plants onto the floor again, except that Eames leans into it and corrects him almost before he has moved.

“How.” It’s all he gets out. He doesn’t think talking is in his mouth’s future for some time. He looks Eames over, top to bottom, and decides he knows what he wants for his mouth’s future, if his body will just let him in its current state.

“I know how this works,” Eames says, tapping Arthur’s temple very gently.

Arthur sighs and falls into him, wrapping his arms around Eames’ shoulders, pressing his face into the cool curve of Eames’ throat, dropping his weight against Eames’ body and letting his legs forget to work. Eames gathers him up readily, keeps him upright, and sways him in time to the music, one hand drifting steadily through his hair.

~~~

_I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. ~ Pablo Neruda_

~fin~


End file.
